LUCKY JACK
Being the misadventures of one of life's losers.
Chapter One: Jack the Despicable!
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WARNING TO NEW READERS- This is a rambling, VERY British story which although being totally a work of fiction is partially based on a true confession told to me many years ago. The theme was made into a short story in the 1990s but has recently been modernized and brought into the 21st century. The main character, Lucky Jack, is totally of my own invention and as some readers may recognise appears in other short stories published elsewhere which straddle this one in chronological sequence of events. This is probably one of those tales that you either love or hate, either way I would love to receive your comments and appreciate your votes.
The story has a lot of sexually explicit content and has a strong 'reluctance/forced sex' and 'alcohol abuse' theme which some readers may find disturbing and might wish to cease reading now...
GreenFingers 2014
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I had almost completely forgotten about the differences between village life and living in the city. It was really not that surprising as I had not returned to the village of Woodley Hill for ten years, not since my mum had taken me back to live in London with her.
I had hated everything about village life when I was a kid and couldn't wait to get back to London where there were proper shops, traffic noises 24/7, real schools with a thousand students and switched on adults who talked about football and television in the pub instead of cabbages and potatoes and how good their bull was at fucking cows. I guess that the years spent with my Gran living at Woodley Hill made me determined to get to university and find a decent job in the city... I really was not going to end up working on a bloody farm, married to one of the local 'Miss Piggys' at nineteen like all the other lads in the village.
My trip back to Woodley Hill was all part of the mountain of shit that I was being forced to climb since leaving university. The last two years of my life had been one bloody shit storm after another. I managed to graduate from Essex University with a decent Business Degree to discover that only the top 10% of business students nationwide, those gaining honours degrees or back-to-back IT qualifications, ever got as far as an interview for a place with a top city firm. The chances were about the same as getting selected to play for Chelsea whilst kicking about in the park. Disappointment number one! Career dreams shattered and innocence lost!
I was worse off financially than I had been as a student. I cycled through poorly paid jobs in call centres or at Starbucks, quite literally, as I could not afford to keep my car on the road and was back to biking to work each day and borrowing Mum's car on the odd evening. I considered returning to Uni to do another year of study to become a teacher but a teacher's starting salary was less than I was making as a barman and I hated kids. At least the cycling was keeping me fit, but the downside was that straddling the saddle also made me incredibly horny in the mornings, by the time that I got into work I always had a boner as rigid as my crossbar. It cost me one job with McDonalds after I was caught shagging one of the waitresses in the staff changing room at 8 am one morning. It didn't help my case that she was also the manager's fiancé so I guess that getting the sack was probably the soft option as Trevor was about twice my size.
I needed a career job desperately if for no other reason than my sex life was suffering badly. I couldn't afford to pay rent on a flat or house in London and although Mum was happy to have me living back home, after three years of having my own place at college it wasn't working out that well. I was used to coming and going as I pleased, eat when I pleased, drink how much I pleased and have whoever I pleased share my bed at night. None of those basic essentials for bachelor life really met with my mother's approval and so we bickered constantly. She hated it when I missed meals and came home pissed. Bringing a girl home for the night was at best traumatic and so my sex life was relegated to shagging on the couch downstairs, or in Mum's car if I borrowed it for the evening, The latter ended when Mum found a used condom under the seat and it was ten weeks before she would allow me to borrow her car to go out at night. I discovered that very few girls who were up for it had places of their own, and those that did have their own gaff also had higher expectations than a couple of drinks and a take-away, my mid-week limit, and I couldn't afford to date them long term on what was left from my meagre income after expenses and repaying my student loan and credit cards.
If my cruddy lifestyle wasn't enough a real disaster was waiting around the corner ready to spring out and catch me with my trousers down just waiting to be buggered by one of life's demon pricks.
Mum got sick!
My mother had always been a tower of strength both physically and emotionally. It was easy to forget how much I leaned on her for support, just her being there was what kept me going and I was too bloody stupid to even notice it. It had always been just Mum and me since I was ten and my Dad, who was a seaman and never there anyway, was inconsiderate enough to fall overboard in the middle of the Atlantic, leaving a mountain of debts and no cash in the bank. Nobody saw him fall, jump or get pushed, nobody actually missed him for nearly a full day and so it was a real tussle for Mum to get pay-out from the insurance company to cover the mortgage on our flat. She was forced to go back to work as a secretary and then the Social Services creeps came sniffing round and caught me at home alone one evening when she was working late to earn extra money. The short story was that my mother either had to give up working until I was fifteen or I had to go live with my Gran at Woodley Hill during term time.
Thinking back now I guess that Mum had always been delicate but had never-the-less worked hard to make a home for me even after I was grown into a man and should have been looking after her.
It was me that found Mum on the kitchen floor when I came home from work that evening. She was unconscious but I could see that she was breathing and so grabbed the duvet from her bed and covered her up and called the paramedics. She had suffered a major brain aneurysm and a heart attack and was not expected to last through that night...but she did. The woman that was transferred from the hospital two months later to a nursing home was not my mother. This person could no longer speak, recognised nobody around her and needed constant medical supervision and help with even the most basic bodily functions. She did not even look like the same person. Her pretty blonde hair had grown out and was completely grey and her face was sunken and gaunt. She looked like a prisoner from Belsen.
To my utter amazement it had been Gran who had come up to London and insisted that her daughter be moved into an expensive private clinic near Guildford in Surrey, and set up a trust to ensure that her care was paid for the rest of her life. I had always imagined that my grandmother existed on nothing but her State Pension but it turned out that she had a massive annuity which she was able to utilize for my mother's care. Thinking back Mum had told me once that Gran had worked as the PA for some sort of banker and so must have had some financial acumen. Mum had also hinted that she had also had been the old boy's long term mistress which probably accounted for the size of her pension. Gran had always been a feisty old biddy but still attractive for her age and I could imagine her as being full on sexy when younger. When I lived with her she always teased me that I took after her side of the family because I was always trying to get my end away with the local girls... Quite successfully for the most part! Sex never shocked Gran the way that it did my mother.
I had forgotten just how smart my Gran was. It was she who arranged for Mum's care, took us to court and got a ruling making me my mother's legal guardian and executor. I now had the London flat to live in... Mum was never coming home so I could have done with it what I liked but I just left it as before, continued to sleep in my old bedroom, just bought a new double bed and bedlinen in the hope that I would not sleep alone too often. My financial problems had not gone away, in fact they had deepened as I now had the balance of the mortgage on the flat to pay and the loan on her car, so by the end of the year I was stony bloody broke working at two crap jobs, as a barista from 8 'til 5 and in a call centre from 6 'til 12 and thought that things could not get any worse. And then they did!
Gran died!
I got a call one Sunday morning from Dr. John Speirs the local GP at Woodley Hill informing me that my grandmother had passed away peacefully in her sleep during the preceding night, from natural causes... after a short illness which I had not even been informed about... she had been 83. The funeral was held at the local church, St. Andrews which she had attended for years and she was buried in the churchyard next to my grandfather who had died long before I was born. I couldn't take Mum to the funeral, she didn't recognise me anymore or understand when we tried to explain to her about Gran. I drove out to visit her every weekend and any afternoons that I had free but she remained totally unresponsive and just stared vacantly at the wall for the entirety of my visit. It was really getting to me and I wept uncontrollably every time that I left her.
I had already received a letter from a London based solicitor informing me of Gran's will and requesting me to make an appointment to visit his office on the City Road to finalise her estate. As far as I knew there was only Mum and me left, if I had any other relatives then I had never heard of them.
There was not very much to finalise. Gran with her normal ruthless efficiency had changed her will after Mum got sick to ensure that her daughter continued to be cared for. The cottage in Surrey was to be sold and the proceeds added to the trust fund set up for my mother's care, the sale to be handled by Mr.Lebowitz her solicitor. The contents of the cottage were also to be sold and the money raised donated to the local church restoration fund. I was to receive the residue of her savings, the contents of her jewellery box, and could have the pick of any of the goods and chattels before they were liquidated. In the event of Mum's demise the trust fund would come to me and until then I would be paid a nominal fee each year as an executor of the trust.
"I would recommend you to go down to Surrey and have a look..." Lebowitz had advised handing me the jewel box with a typed schedule of the contents, "I believe Mrs. Farthingale had several quite interesting oil paintings and some watercolours which could be of value."
I didn't really want to take the time off from work to spend a week in Woodley Hill, I had already used up most of my statutory holiday time with visiting Mum and then Gran's funeral and making the necessary arrangements. But the 'residue' of her savings had amounted to only £1761.43 after the funeral and all debts were settled and my current overdraft with the bank was £2,438.76 with the mortgage and household bills not yet paid this month, so I seriously needed any cash which might be raised from the sale of her things and the cottage was already on the market with a potential buyer lined up so time was short.
